The Abduction (18 page)

The quick response surprised even Allison. Ninety seconds after she hit the emergency call button, the first team of FBI agents were at her front door. Secret Service was right behind. Within minutes, the entire block surrounding her townhouse was secured, and checkpoints were posted on every street corner leading in or out of Georgetown. Agents patrolled the neighborhood, searching for any suspicious activity or abandoned vehicles. Police recorded all license tags, which would be run through the National Crime Information Center. Trained dogs sniffed bushes and trash receptacles on the sidewalks and alleys for possible explosive devices.

Inside, Allison’s home was becoming a fortress. Agents stood guard at the front and back doors. Forensic teams searched for any signs of an attempted break-in. Harley Abrams arrived with a team of crack technical agents who were eager to take her house high-tech. He was standing in her kitchen, leaning against her refrigerator with a pencil tucked behind his ear, reviewing a checklist on his clipboard.

“Security still needs to come up a notch,” he said.

Allison was polite, but firm. “I don’t want the FBI moving into my living room.”

“There’s a townhouse for rent across the street. We’re leasing it to set up a satellite command center. A team will be on call twenty-four hours a day. They’ll patrol the street on foot, blending right into the neighborhood. Even the homeless guy at the bus stop will actually be one of our agents. If anything happens here, the response time will be virtually instantaneous.”

“That’s good enough.”

“We’ll also install additional security cameras, which will feed back to the command center. Our techies are putting up at least eight more to cover every angle of the outside of your townhouse. They’ll be hidden in the lamppost, bushes, cars parked on the street. That kind of thing. No one will even notice them. It’s your call as to whether you want indoor surveillance.”

“Sorry, but I stopped posing naked in front of cameras years ago.”

Harley cracked a smile but remained professional. “I would at least recommend phone surveillance.”

“I need a private line. Not that I don’t trust you, but, well, I don’t trust anybody.”

“We can install a manual activation switch. Just answer the phone as you normally would. If it’s something you want us to hear, just hit the star key and punch eight. An agent will be on the line to record and trace the call.”

“That’s acceptable.”

Harley glanced at the telephone, which was resting on the counter that separated the kitchen from the family room. One of the technical agents was unscrewing the casing, busily rewiring it. “It would have been nice to have the phone monitor in place before this afternoon’s call. Although I’m
not sure how he got your home number anyway.”

“It leaks out. I’ve always had to change it every
few
weeks. People hound the attorney general on all kinds of issues—abortion, gun control, capital punishment. You wouldn’t believe the number of organizations that pass out my address and phone number to their members.”

He nodded, not surprised.

She asked, “Any information yet on the source of the call?”

“He used a cellular phone, and with today’s roaming capabilities it could have been placed from Honolulu, for all we know. The phone is a clone—some number he stole from a real estate agent in New York. The phone company picked that up immediately. Their computers are designed to recognize a call on a cloned phone and disconnect it immediately, which protects their legitimate customers from having their numbers pirated. Our kidnappers have obviously figured out a way to override the system. My guess is that every call we get will be on a different clone, each with its own unique frequency and a different roaming pattern.”

“So we’re not dealing with total dummies.”

“At least not technological dummies. We’re installing the software to trace any future calls from cellular phones, but naturally it’s a little more difficult to pinpoint an exact location when you’re trying to measure signal strength and intersecting radio frequencies. I’m sure that’s why they’re using cellular.”

Allison looked away, thinking.

“What’s wrong?” asked Harley.

“All this talk about intersecting radio frequencies just got me to thinking about how Emily was
abducted. Baby monitors like the one I had operate on radio frequencies. We figured somebody must have eavesdropped on the baby monitor from outside the house to tape-record her noises. That’s how they made the tape they left in her crib.”

“Allison, just because somebody knows how to clone a cellular phone with an ESN detector they bought at some spy shop doesn’t mean he’s the same guy who camped outside your house listening to your baby monitor. When I said we’re not dealing with technological dummies, I didn’t mean to imply there are only five or six people on the planet who know how to do this. Hell, there are probably five or six people sitting at DuPont Circle doing it right now.”

“I know,” she said, shaking off the thought. “What else do we need to cover?”

“I faxed your notes back to Quantico for our profilers to analyze. Is there anything else you remember about the phone call? Anything you might have left out?”

She shook her head. “I did exactly what you said. As soon as I got off the phone with you, I wrote down everything I could remember, word for word.”

“We’re obviously treating this call as the real thing. But I didn’t read anything in your notes that would confirm one way or the other if this was legitimate, or if it was just some nut pulling a prank. You’re the only one who heard his voice, so I need you to listen to something. Just to give us a voice confirmation.”

“You have the kidnapper’s voice on tape?”

“Yes. They called Tanya Howe this afternoon, before you got your call.”

“I know
that.
What I didn’t know is that you
had it on tape. I thought she kicked the FBI out of her house.”

“She taped it herself. I guess she didn’t know it was a felony to tape-record a conversation without a court order or the other person’s consent. The manufacturers of these phones always print legal warnings in the instruction manuals, but nobody ever reads them. I trust she won’t be prosecuted.”

“I think the state attorney in Nashville might see his way around this one. We’ll definitely have a problem with an illegal recording if this case goes to trial, but I’ll worry about that later.”

Harley pulled a cassette tape from his pocket. “Do you have a cassette player?”

“In the family room.” She led him from the kitchen to the adjacent entertainment center, near the big screen television.

Harley switched on the amplifier, dropped the tape into the cassette player, and then hit the
PLAY
button. The speakers hissed. He adjusted the volume to minimize the distortion. Allison leaned forward, listening intently. It began with Tanya’s voice, in the middle of the conversation, where she had started taping.

“Please, don’t hurt my daughter. You can have whatever you want. Just let her go.”

The words pierced Allison’s heart. The angst, the desperation in her voice. She closed her eyes and braced herself for the mechanical-sounding response.

“I told you what I want. A million dollars. By tomorrow morning. And no cops.”

Her eyes opened, but the room was suddenly spinning. It was any parent’s worst nightmare—or was it? All those nights she rushed to the phone
hoping for a call about Emily. Nothing ever came, just a few false sightings and some cruel cranks. She’d never talked to anyone who’d actually seen Emily, who knew exactly where she was and had the power to return her. She felt sick to her stomach, selfishly sick, listening to another poor woman agonize over her lost child, yet thinking all the while that Tanya was the lucky one, that she would cut off her arm just for the chance to get Emily back for the mere payment of money.

“Allison?” asked Harley. “Is it the same voice?”

The tape had finished. Allison was ashen. “It’s the same voice,” she said. “Same disguise, I should say.”

Harley sighed, looking her in the eye. “Then you were right. We really do have a new ball game.”

Allison looked past him as he spoke. Her attention had shifted to the front door. Peter was standing in the foyer, next to an FBI agent. He seemed flustered. She excused herself from Harley, then met her husband alone in the living room, away from the commotion.

“What the heck is going on?” he asked her.

Allison wasn’t sure where to begin. “That phone call I took right before you left. It was Kristen Howe’s kidnappers. They want us—you and me—to pay the ransom.”

His mouth opened, but words didn’t come.

She said, “It blew me away, too. But before we deal with that, I think you got the wrong idea about me and Mitch. When I said I had seen Mitch, that’s all I meant. There was nothing romantic between us. There’s never been anything romantic with anyone. Not since I met you.”

He gave her a funny look.

“That didn’t come out right. I mean, there hasn’t been anything romantic with
anyone else
since I met you.”

He lowered his eyes, then sighed. “I’m sorry I ran out before you could explain.”

“It’s okay. But maybe now you know why I didn’t tell you Mitch had contacted me, even though there was nothing to it.”

“I know,” he said with a sheepish smile. “It’s that curse of being married to a beautiful woman. It can make you crazy jealous.”

She kissed him, but she knew he wasn’t just being sweet. Peter was not exactly a looker, and having such a beautiful wife sometimes played to that insecurity.

Two FBI agents whisked past them on their way to the kitchen. Peter grimaced, as if overwhelmed by the sudden intrusion of law enforcement. He looked back at Allison, seemingly annoyed. “What a way to live. FBI, Secret Service all over the place.” He peered through the window, grimacing at the technical agents wiring the outdoor surveillance cameras. “Guess I better get used to it, huh?”

“Peter, let’s be fair. Even before I got back into politics, you had your own corporate security. Some of those guys were just as intrusive.”

“I know. But I trusted them.”

“I can’t change what I am, Peter. And this is not forever.”

He nodded, as if to concede. Then he refocused. “What did you tell the kidnappers about the ransom?”

“I didn’t really tell them anything.”

“How much do they want?”

“A million dollars. By Monday.”

His eyebrows rose. “That’s a big pot of money.”

“I know. But if we don’t pay it, they’ll kill Kristen.”

“And you’ll lose the election.”

“That’s really secondary.”

“Is it?” he said, raising a doubt.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “It is.”

He gave her an assessing look. “Do you want to pay the money?”

“I think you and I need to decide that together.”

“I’m asking you. Do you want to pay the money?”

She snagged her lip with her teeth, thinking. “If it were Emily’s life on the line, could we come up with a million dollars by Monday?”

“Absolutely.”

She looked away, then back at him. “Then the answer is yes. If that’s what it’s going to take to get Kristen back safely, we should pay it.”

“If that’s what you want to do.”

“That’s what I want,” she said with conviction.

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about the money. You do whatever it is you have to do.”

She embraced him tightly, her eyes welling with emotion. “Thank you, Peter.”

He held her for a moment, then asked, “What are you going to do now?”

She stepped out of his embrace and looked him in the eye. “I think it’s time I had a talk with Tanya Howe.”

The jet engines purred at thirty thousand feet as Allison released her seat belt and reclined in the leather chair. She had stopped flying on the Justice Department’s Sabre Liner Jet almost a year ago, ever since she’d announced her candidacy, out of fear that someone would accuse her of misappropriating federal property for her own political purposes. This morning, however, with Harley Abrams at her side, she made an exception.

Allison sipped her coffee from a paper cup, thinking about what she might say to Tanya Howe. She glanced at the clouds drifting outside her window, well beneath the aircraft. White and fluffy, with a perfect blue sky above. It looked like the ceiling in Emily’s nursery, the way Allison had hand-painted it before she was born. Her baby would always wake to a bright blue sky, another perfect and happy day. Or so she’d planned.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” asked Harley. He was in the seat next to her. A mess of papers covered the tray table in his lap.

Allison stirred from her thoughts. “Only if I can reserve the right not to answer.”

“Deal.” He shifted in his seat so he could look at her as he spoke. “Actually, my question is marginally relevant to the investigation. I was thinking about your case last night—Emily’s abduction. I
conjured up this image of a career-minded, unmarried thirty-nine-year-old state attorney. I couldn’t help but wonder, why did she adopt a baby?”

She glanced out the window again, admiring the clouds. Then she looked back and said, “I wish I could tell you I was moved by some noble and selfless agenda, like nurturing a crack baby or rescuing a battered child from abuse. But the truth is, I adopted a baby because I wanted one.”

“But how did you come around to actually going through with the adoption?”

“I was engaged to Mitch when I decided to adopt. We talked about it, and I told him I would never have children of my own. Polycystic kidney disease runs in my family, which we didn’t know until my brother was diagnosed after he was married. His son got it and died from it. There’s no preventive treatment, and it’s usually fatal if it develops during childhood, so I wasn’t going to take the risk of passing it on to my own child. I also knew it could take a long time to adopt a newborn. So I got on a list before we even set a wedding date.”

“And you still adopted, even after you broke off the engagement.”

“By the time I ended it with Mitch, I was psychologically ready to have a baby. I was thirty-nine years old. I had already gone through the hassle and expense of preparing for adoption, and I was excited about becoming a mother. So I figured, Why not just go through with it? My mother raised me and my brother without a father. I could do it, too.”

“Makes sense,” he said, scratching his chin like Sigmund Freud himself. His eyes returned to the notes in his lap.

“My turn,” she said, drawing him back.

“Your turn for what?”

“You think this is a court-ordered deposition or something? You’re the only guy who gets to ask questions?”

He smirked. “What do you want to know?”

“Something I’ve just been curious about. It’s interesting the way you see me as someone too wrapped up in a career to have children. What about you? A guy who makes a career out of chasing child abductors, with no family of his own. Is this the kind of work that makes you never want to have kids? Or did it just kind of work out that way?”

“Some of the profilers back at Quantico get that way. They see too much. But that wasn’t what stopped me.” His eyes drifted off to the middle distance. “I was married once. Long time ago. We tried to have children. It just didn’t happen.”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks. That’s about all you can say. It always rubbed me the wrong way when friends tried to comfort us by rattling off statistics. After my wife’s first miscarriage, they would say things like, ‘Did you know that sixty percent of women experience a miscarriage in their lifetime?’ Great. I figured these must be the same people who walk up to grieving widows at funerals and say, ‘Sorry about your husband, Mrs. Jones, but did you know that a hundred percent of the people on this planet eventually drop dead?’ Like that’s supposed to make you feel better.”

Allison nodded. He had a point. “So you never thought about adoption?”

“We did, but the marriage didn’t work out. I was twenty, she was nineteen when we got married. Her heart wandered while I was up to my
waist in Vietnamese rice paddies, and I guess I never really got over that. I’ve been divorced—jeez, forever. More than twenty years now.”

“You never found anyone else?”

“My, this
is
getting personal.”

She blushed. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

“No, I guess I don’t mind.” He paused, smiling thinly. “I always thought someday I would meet someone. In fact, I was positively sure of it. When my dad got cancer a few years ago, I got depressed thinking that when I eventually did have kids, their grandfather would be gone and they’d never get to know him. So I interviewed him on videotape, for his future grandchildren. I asked him all about the family, his whole life story. Eighty years of memories.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“It was, even though my old man was kind of cranky about the whole filming process. The most interesting part was at the end. We were a little punchy and were getting philosophical, talking about who was the greatest leader of all time, things like that. Off the wall, I asked him one final question: What do you think is the greatest threat to civilized society today? He paused for the longest time. Just dead silence as the videotape kept running. Finally he looks straight into the camera and says, ‘Videotape.’”

Allison laughed lightly, then smiled with her eyes. “I think I would have liked your father.”

Harley returned the smile, then turned a little serious. “I’m actually a lot like him.”

Silence filled the space between them. They locked eyes a little longer than they might have, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Far from it.

Allison slowly turned her head, returning to the clouds.

The plane landed at Nashville International late Friday evening. As previously arranged, Allison rode in an FBI Bucar to Nashville’s upscale Brentwood area. Harley Abrams and two other agents traveled with her in the same unmarked vehicle, but there was no motorcade or police escort that would alert the media to the attorney general’s arrival.

Tanya Howe drove alone to Brentwood in her own car. Harley had personally called to tell her about the demand Allison had received from the kidnappers. She agreed to a meeting, but they both agreed it should be secret, away from the house. No one could say how the kidnappers would react if they knew Tanya was meeting with the attorney general. No one knew what kind of speculation the media might generate about a face-to-face meeting between Allison and Tanya Howe. The media was camped outside Tanya’s home for the long haul, so there was no sure way to bring Allison inside without the world knowing about it. Tanya’s principal concern, however, wasn’t the rest of the world. It was her parents. She feared how they—particularly her father—might react to her meeting with the other candidate. She told her mother she was going to see a friend, just to get out of the house.

Allison’s Bucar crushed a layer of twigs and fallen leaves as it rolled up the long uphill driveway to Sofia Johnson’s home. Nestled behind a stand of trees that had dropped their leaves was a small, two-story Tudor-style house with a stone fireplace and a wood shingle roof. A waft of gray
smoke curled from the chimney. The smell of burning oak filled the chilly night air. A porch light glowed in the darkness, and the garage door was open. The driver pulled the Bucar inside and cut off the engine.

The door closed automatically. After quick introductions, Sofia whisked them into the house, through a door that connected the garage to the kitchen.

Five minutes later, a white Chrysler pulled up the driveway. Tanya hadn’t succeeded in losing every media tail, but it didn’t matter. Sofia Johnson truly was a friend of hers, and no one but Tanya knew that the attorney general was waiting inside.

She parked in the driveway. Sofia greeted her at the front door. Harley introduced the two other agents, then Sofia led her upstairs to a small sitting room. The agents waited downstairs.

“I really appreciate this,” Tanya said to her friend as they headed up the narrow staircase.

“No problem,” said Sofia. “It’s not like I’m harboring the enemy. I wasn’t going to vote for your father anyway.”

Tanya cracked a faint smile, appreciating a little levity. They embraced on the upstairs landing, then Tanya headed down the hall, alone.

Allison drummed her fingers nervously on the armchair, waiting. Finally the door opened. She rose to greet the younger woman.

“I’m Allison,” she said, extending her hand.

“No kidding,” said Tanya.

Allison recoiled. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to insult your intelligence by stating the obvious. Just wanted to get us on a first-name basis, as opposed to Ms. Leahy or something really obnox
ious, like Madam Attorney General. May I call you Tanya?”

“Sure.” She took a seat in the rocking chair by the bookshelf. Allison returned to the plaid upholstered armchair facing the window. The drapes were drawn, shutting out any enterprising photographers who might be curious about Tanya’s sudden visit to a friend.

Allison studied her pained expression. The eyes were hollow. The worry lines on her face seemed carved in wax. Allison suddenly felt guilty about her earlier reaction to the tape recording of Tanya’s conversation with the kidnappers. True, Tanya had a better shot at getting her daughter back than Allison did. But to think of Tanya as the lucky one was a senseless comparison, like saying the dying were luckier than the dead because the dead had shown them the way.

Allison began, “I don’t want you to think of me as the attorney general. Don’t look at me as a presidential candidate. I’m not here for either of those reasons.”

“I know. Mr. Abrams explained everything. I’m just thankful there’s still hope. When the kidnapper hung up on me this afternoon, I thought they were through negotiating. I never dreamed they’d call you. I guess they believed my father when he said he’d never pay.”

“He was pretty convincing.”

“That’s because he meant it. You know the reputation my father had at the Pentagon, the hard; liner on terrorism. No negotiations. Period.”

“Reputation is one thing. You’d think he might budge when his own granddaughter was at stake.”

“You’d think,” she said vaguely.

Allison sensed Tanya was about to say more.
She waited, but Tanya fell silent. Allison said, “If you want us to pay the kidnappers, my husband and I will come up with the money. A million dollars.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch, really. The only thing I would ask is that you allow two FBI agents back into your home, for your own protection. And that you allow the FBI to monitor your phones. I know the kidnappers told you no FBI. But kidnappers always say that. Unless they’re total idiots, they’ll execute their plan on the assumption that you
did
call the FBI. I’m not asking you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, if I were in your shoes.”

“That’s all I have to do? I don’t have to endorse you for president or anything?”

Allison smiled faintly. “No. We won’t publicize it. No one ever has to know that we supplied the money. Not even your parents.”

“Especially not my parents.”

“That’s fine. It’s your call. I’m not doing this for publicity or political advantage.”

Tanya narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Then why are you doing it?”

“To save Kristen. And…”

“And what?”

Allison sighed. “It’s important to me that we find Kristen. Don’t discount my feelings about that. But I’ll be perfectly honest with you. There may be more to this kidnapping than you or your father understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re looking for a possible connection between Kristen’s kidnapping and the abduction of my daughter eight years ago.”

“So you’re paying the million dollars in the
hope that it will lead to evidence that might lead you to Emily?”

“In a way, I guess that’s true. But it’s not conditioned on that. We’re paying the money, period. If it brings Kristen back, that alone will be worth it.”

“Look, I appreciate your generosity. But I don’t want anyone who gets involved in this to have any personal agenda. My only objective is getting Kristen back safe.”

“I agree with you. It’s not a question of putting one person’s daughter ahead of the other’s. You have to look at it as an opportunity for us to help each other. If the kidnappings are connected, it only makes sense to be thinking about both of them. A pretty good argument can be made that Kristen was kidnapped for the same reason Emily was abducted eight years ago—to hurt
me.
Mr. Abrams doesn’t think my baby was abducted by someone who wanted a child of their own or who wanted to sell her for profit. There are much easier ways of getting an infant than breaking into someone’s house—like stealing a newborn from a hospital, for instance. And if you look at Kristen’s kidnapping, it’s tempting to say that somebody is trying to make your father win the election. But it’s just as easy to say that somebody is trying to make me
lose.
The fact that the kidnappers have now demanded ransom from
me
would only seem to bolster the possibility of a connection.”

Tanya had that look on her face again—as if she was struggling to say something. But she remained silent.

Allison picked up on it this time. “You look troubled, Tanya. Is there something about this connection theory that doesn’t sit well with you?”

She looked away, breathing a heavy sigh. “It’s
just your whole theory about the motivation for Kristen’s kidnapping—that it’s designed to hurt you, as opposed to helping my father.”

“You don’t see it that way?” asked Allison.

She closed her eyes, as if suddenly in sharp pain. “I don’t know.”

Allison leaned forward, softening her voice. “Tanya, what is it?”